American poet David Ray was the son of Dowell Adolphus and Katherine Ray. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a master's degree in 1957. Ray taught at universities in the USA, India, New Zealand and Australia. In the United States, Ray edited New Letters magazine 1971-1985 and was the founding editor and producer of the weekly radio program, New Letters on the Air. He published over a dozen books of poetry, as well as fiction and drama and received awards for his poetry over a period of forty years.
Ray visited Australia and New Zealand during 1991-1992. John Kinsella recounts on his website that 'I first came across David Ray's work during his visit to Australia in 1991. Resident for a few months at the University of Western Australia, he quickly became an active part of a poetry community very concerned with the issues of isolation and what constitutes an independent poetic voice - the language of place and identity, especially vis-à-vis an international community. The issues that concern Ray in his poetry were immediately available and of interest to poets in Perth - among the most isolated capital cities in the world, if not itself the most. Also a community polarised as 'they', or the 'other', within a vast nation in which the real 'centre' is the Eastern seaboard, specifically the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne'. Elizabeth Jolley (q.v.) and John Millett (q.v.) became good friends during the visit.
